Kaos

How to play
You stand in a circle. For the game to be effective you need quite a few people because this creates a challenge when you are memorizing the names and people. The first person says someone else's name in the circle, then that person says someone else's name and so on until all people in the circle have been said. This is the first layer. The second layer is different. This time you throw a ball around the circle, creating a new pattern, once again until everyone's name has been said. Lastly you add the third layer which consists of adding layer one and two together. You throw the ball to the same person but you say the first pattern over the top. This means that they won't have any relation to each other making the third pattern the hardest. We will also be adding a fourth layer which I predict will include a movement.

Skills needed
I  think the purpose of this game is to gain control and a positive mind-set. When someone dropped the ball I felt agitated and disappointed because I felt that they had stopped the flow of the game. However they had just dropped the ball. That's it. However I felt that this was a negative thing. This game helped me think differently and accept what had happened. I will need this when performing because everyone will have to work together and most importantly support each other. This means if someone makes a mistake we can't get annoyed we need to accept it and carry on because mistakes are part of life and acting.

Fourth Layer
In today's lesson, 2 weeks after we were first introduced to the game, we learnt how to perform the third layer. This, as I predicted, was a movement. We created another pattern by walking over to someone, tapping them on the shoulder and taking their place in the circle. That person then walks to someone else and so on until everyone has moved across the circle. Then we moved, threw the ball and over the top of both we said the names. It was almost organised chaos. Everyone knew what they had to do and we were all trying to focus on everything we had to remember. However the reality is that it got a little chaotic and people were dropping the ball a lot more and people lost the people they were looking for; though we had to remember that dropping the ball is not a negative.

Relating it to the play
It is all about the philosophy of collective responsibility. We all had to be aware of each other so we would know when to speak, catch the ball or move. If one person wasn't paying attention then it went wrong. It is the same with a play. If one person gives up and doesn't put effort in then the rest of the play is affected. It is also about not seeing failure as a negative. When someone dropped the ball I sometimes felt that that person had let the team down, but it is just dropping a ball and it won't affect anyone. When you are performing a play you won't always be perfect and you need to be supportive of your peers if they make a mistake. All the different layers represent a different aspect of performing a play:
Layer 1 (names)- lines in a play
Layer 2 (ball)- props and action
Layer 3 (movement)- spacial awareness
We also had an improvised fourth layer. When we said peoples names we started to put expression into our voices. This is good practice for playing an objective and reacting to what others on the stage do.

The best way to perform this game is to always keep calm. If you panic you lose control of what you are doing and you add to the chaos of the game. You should use your peripheral vision to keep track of the person throwing to you, the person you're throwing to and the person you tap.